Abstract
As with faces, participants are better at discriminating upright bodies than inverted bodies. This inversion effect is reliable for whole figures, namely, bodies with heads, but it is less reliable for headless bodies. This suggests that removal of the head disrupts typical processing of human figures, and raises questions about the role of faces in efficient body discrimination. In most studies, faces are occluded, but the aim here was to exclude faces in a more ecologically valid way by presenting photographic images of human figures from behind (about-facing), as well as measuring gaze to different parts of the figures. Participants determined whether pairs of sequentially presented body postures were the same or different for whole and headless figures. Presenting about-facing figures (heads seen from behind) and forward-facing figures with faces enabled a comparison of the effect of the presence or absence of faces. Replicating previous findings, there were inversion effects for forward-facing whole figures, but less reliable effects for headless images. There were also inversion effects for about-facing whole figures, but not about-facing headless figures. Accuracy was higher in the forward- compared to the about-facing conditions, but proportional dwell time was greater to bodies in about-facing images. Likewise, despite better discrimination of forward-facing upright compared to inverted whole figures, participants focused more on the heads and less on the bodies in upright compared to inverted images. However, there was no clear relationship between performance and dwell time proportions to heads. Body inversion effects (BIEs) were found with about-facing whole figures and headless forward-facing figures, despite the absence of faces. With inverted whole figures, there was a significant relationship between performance and greater looking at bodies, and less at heads suggesting that in more difficult conditions a focus on bodies is associated with better discrimination. Overall, the findings suggest that the visual system has greater sensitivity to bodies in their most experienced form, which is typically upright and with a head. Otherwise, the more a face is implied by the context, as in whole figures or forward- rather than about-facing headless bodies, the better the performance as holistic/configural processing is likely stronger.
Highlights
Inverted faces are more difficult to discriminate than upright faces, and this inversion effect is larger than that seen with other objects such as dogs or houses (e.g., Diamond and Carey, 1986; Farah et al, 1995; Rossion, 2008)
Unlike Brandman and Yovel (2010) we failed to see any difference in Body inversion effects (BIEs) between the forward- and about-facing conditions and we find a headless BIE in the forwardfacing condition
Directly looking at heads might not be necessary for a BIE given that the correlations between Dwell time (DT) proportions to heads and performance were weak and we find a headless BIE and a BIE with about-facing whole figures
Summary
Inverted faces are more difficult to discriminate than upright faces, and this inversion effect is larger than that seen with other objects such as dogs or houses (e.g., Diamond and Carey, 1986; Farah et al, 1995; Rossion, 2008). One argument is that faces are a unique category subject to specialized processing, perhaps because we are highly familiar with them, and they share the same first-order configuration (eyes above nose above mouth), which means that telling them apart is based not just on the presence of certain features, and holistic or configural processing (e.g., Robbins and McKone, 2007). Another category associated with large inversion effects is human bodies (e.g., Robbins and Coltheart, 2012b). Bodies are attached to faces, so one question is whether or how much the body inversion effect (BIE) is influenced by actual or induced face information when discriminating bodies
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